


do not stand at my grave and weep

by betony



Category: Murder on the Orient Express (2017)
Genre: Ensemble Cast, Gen, Post-Canon, They Provide....Leverage
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-24
Updated: 2018-12-24
Packaged: 2019-09-25 17:43:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,000
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17125871
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/betony/pseuds/betony
Summary: If Linda was honest with herself, she’d only done what she’d done because Sonia would have laughed to hear of it.





	do not stand at my grave and weep

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ryfkah](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ryfkah/gifts).



Thoughts of justice and revenge came only later. If Linda was honest with herself, she’d only done what she’d done because Sonia would have laughed to hear of it.

Helena had been a strange solemn child, sighing over Ibsen and Racine, but Sonia was ever her mother’s child and loved the comedies best. She’d cheered at Rosalind’s disguises and hooted at Beatrice’s wish to be a man, and she had never wept, not once, not until the day they woke to find Daisy missing.

Then there’d been tears enough, so much Sonia had died of it and taken all thoughts of laughter with her.

At least until the thought had entered Linda’s mind: a crime committed by twelve people and none, all at the same time. A solemn jury in stereotypical disguise. A puzzle of the sort that would have made Sonia clap her hands in delight, and now would have to serve as her memorial.

* * *

 Actresses are only as good as their last performance, and audiences have a short memory. Fortunately Linda’s last performance had been a good one. She is leaving the Imperial Theatre after a rare visit to friends when a hand plucks at her sleeve. When she turns, she find a lanky boy who doesn’t look old enough to be wearing trousers, much less the mustache and cane he brandishes.

“Please,” he says, and his eyes are fever-bright; Linda remembers seeing eyes like that every time she glanced in a mirror during those terrible weeks of waiting. “They told me you could help.”

* * *

 She calls Miss Debenham first—Mrs. Arbuthnot, now. Mary is good enough to answer by the second ring, despite the late hour; she sounds only mildly surprised. They had agreed, the twelve of them, that safety could best be found in staying far apart. Poirot might be counted on for his silence, but they have no assurance of any other detective’s sympathy—and despite what the Belgian might believe, he is _not_ the only clever man in the world.

Mary listens in silence, and passes the receiver over to John, who confirms the boy’s tale.

“Snake oil salesmen,” he says, voice thick with professional disgust. But there are more than a few desperate enough for a cure who’ll believe them, like the boy’s mother did. The whole fortune’s gone?”

“Nothing but their reputation to live on. Utterly ruined, father dead, and mother no less ill for the draughts this Floyd prescribed them.”

“And,” asks Mary, “they want—compensation?”

She hesitates before deciding on: “Satisfaction.”

“Well, then,” says John, after what must been a silent but serious exchange with Mary on the other end. “I expect we might do something about that.”

“As do I,” says Caroline.

* * *

 Marquez has the first cue. He might accuse her of typecasting, but he’s so _good_ at being immediately likeable, adding enough hints of his unreliability to keep from frightening off the criminal. He finds Floyd easily in the crowded bar, and by the time they pass her seat on the way to the door, five drinks later, they are the best of friends.

“No, no, no,” Marquez corrects, stumbling so Floyd must catch him. And so he should; Caroline had had him practice the blocking for that particular piece of slapstick until he could do it in his sleep. “Not the Fountain of Youth, not that pile of hokum. I only said it was _like_ enough to be confused for it.”

“Really,” says Floyd, eyes keen and sober. The first bait’s set. “Tell me more.”

* * *

“We’ll use my own medical records, I think,” says Masterman, and Caroline pauses.

“Edward,” she offers, “if anyone deserves his peace, it’s—“

He harrumphs at her, as he had all those years when someone had set something out of place in the Armstrong mansion. “As I’ve said more than once, I now have the freedom to do and say exactly as I please, and I intend to use it. Respectfully, madam, as the Americans say: do mind your own beeswax.”

Caroline stifles a laugh, and Masterman nods at her, his mission to distract her accomplished.

“Now,” he says briskly, “as to the question of how best to convince Mr. Floyd I should be able to reward him handsomely for his goods, should he procure them—“

* * *

“No,” objects the Princess Dragomiroff. “You will not do this thing without my help. I will not allow it.”

Caroline allows herself a single exasperated sigh. She loves Natalia, truly she does, but sometimes Natalia can be a thousand times more difficult to manage than the demands of an entire cast.

She can’t deny, though, that a grieving nearly-widow who has no qualms about demonstrating that she is made of money is exactly the sort of thing Floyd needs to be drawn in.

And if Natalia fumbles a line or two, or forgets she’s meant to be happily married to Masterman —well, that is what her loving daughter Hildegard is for. Caroline’s always been a strong advocate of keeping a well-prepared understudy around.

* * *

“I do not,” Pierre Michel points out, “think anyone might mistake me for a man of the West Indies.”

John laughs, only a little bitterly. “As long as you’re--foreign, the particulars don't much matter, my friend. Take my word for it that Floyd will believe you.”

Pierre looks unconvinced, but fortunately he argues no further, not even when John breaks character as the chemist come along to verify the contents of the miracle cure Marquez has promised Floyd and mutters a warning in French. Pierre keeps looking blankly ahead, silent and uncomprehending and Caroline couldn’t be prouder.

* * *

Masterman rises from his deathbed, Lazarus-like, and had he not run off to join the army like the rest of his generation, Caroline reckons he might have made his fortune treading the boards beside her. Natalia is…somewhat less polished, but the mark is convinced, and in the end that’s all that matters.

Marquez takes out an advertisement in the newspaper that is the prearranged signal that Floyd has expressed interest in doing more business with him, should an interested client present himself, which means it’s Hardman’s turn now. “You know what it is you have to do?”

“I spent years pretending to be a policeman worth his badge. I can’t say that pretending to be a go-between on behalf of the Booth boys should be much different.”

“Good. And after? When do we reach out to them?”

Hardman stops short. “Might work better if I hadn’t put them both behind bars three times myself.”

Caroline rubs her temples.

* * *

Billy and Thomas Booth respond better to a pretty face, anyway, and Mary’s is the prettiest of the lot. She’s all buttoned-up virtue, enough convince even hardened gangsters that she is an utter innocent, bamboozled by her boss. They won’t look to her when the time comes to seek their revenge, which is precisely how Caroline wants it.

Hardman has successfully convinced Floyd that the Booths are interested in a shipment twice what he’d bargained for before, for which he’s already paid Marquez a sizable advance. Now all that remains is to bait the second part of their trap, and to Mary, whose very occupation consists of convincing little monsters to do as she pleases, that can only be child’s play.

The contract that MacQueen draws up for Mary to offer the gangsters is a masterpiece even to Caroline’s amateur eyes. Although he might lack the inclination towards honest work as a lawyer, no one can accuse him of lacking the talent for it; she knows all too well that he came first in his class at Princeton. “But what does it say?” Caroline asks, thumbing through all thirty pages, and MacQueen snorts.

“Not a damn thing,” he explains. “It’s not worth the paper it’s printed on. But it’ll make the Booth boys feel they’re entitled to their goods, and when Floyd can’t pay--” he slides his hand across his throat horizontally.

* * *

 To give Floyd his due, he runs when he discovers the extent to which he’s been deceived. He might even have made it to safety, if Caroline hadn’t outthought him, same as she has every step of the way. It isn’t enough to take his money, his reputation, and his self-confidence; Caroline wants more.

That is why she sends Pilar to intercept him.

From the carnage she finds later, she takes it that Floyd, driven to desperation, attempted to lay hands on the meek mild maid he assumed Pilar to be. By the time it’s all over and Caroline strides up, Floyd has a bloody nose and a bruised chin and looks every bit the sniveling coward he is.

“I do hope he didn’t give you too much trouble,” Caroline calls over an elegant shoulder, and Pilar scowls.

“Not enough,” she snaps. “It is almost time for Vespers, and I wasn’t halfway through my first _Te Deum_ before he crumbled like a cheesecake.”

Caroline laughs and hunkers down beside Floyd. This is her soliloquy, last before curtain call, and she does not intend to waste a minute of it.

“Now,” she says, with relish, “dear Mr. Floyd, at last we can speak. As I see it, you have two choices: either I reunite you with your friends the Booth or you and I can pay a visit to the police station and we can acquaint them with your crimes. _All_ your crimes.”

In the end, he sees sense. She thought he might. The Booth brothers might not have their vengeance, but the grieving adolescent she’d met what seems an eternity ago will. Linda can be satisfied with that.

* * *

“MARVELOUS MAMA,” Helena, who is touring in Prague with Rudy, cables with her usual lack of attention to punctuation, grammar, and clarity. It’s not until they meet in Paris, that Linda can ask her daughter what she meant.

“Why,” replies Helena, and her tones of voice, if not as cheerful as they were five years ago, are at least clear once more, “what you did, of course. It was in all the papers, over here, how the medicine-maker Mr Floyd came before the police and admitted all his wrong-doing.”

“Darling,” Linda says, “I don’t see what I should have to do with all that.”

Helena makes a face. “I am not so stupid as to believe you, Mama. Who else might have done such a thing?”

“Plenty of people, I’m sure.” It’s not a denial, though, and Helena is sharp enough to notice.

“Now,” Helena says, “Not that it should matter to you, of course, but there is a girl in the corps alongside who has gotten herself into the most terrible trouble. She could do with one fairy godmother or more, if you know what I mean….”

She does. She sips her tea, nods and hums disinterestedly, and files away every detail in her memory

* * *

Poirot hails her in a London restaurant weeks after, and Linda fights back a surge of panic. She has never forgiven him, not really, for dangling the promise of being with Sonia and Daisy again before her and snatching it away just as soon; and what’s more, she does not want to hear what conclusions he might have produced.

“You told me,” he says, flourishing his croissant in her general direction, “that you should all be good from now on. I remember it very well.”

Not that well, apparently. “I said so about the others,” Linda reminds him. “I didn’t say a thing about myself.”

His eyes crease in acknowledgement. “Indeed you did not, Mrs. Arden. Very wise not to.”

“Really? And why is that?”

“The others, they can be good, just as you say. But you, _madame_ \--you will be great.”

He gets up to go, determined as always to have the last word. In her mind’s eye, Sonia collapses into giggles, managing to control herself long enough to ask, _“He really does think a lot of himself, that one, doesn’t he?”_

“My dear,” says Caroline, “I couldn’t agree more.”

**Author's Note:**

> Title from a poem by Mary Elizabeth Frye, 1932. For ryfkah, whose prompts made me watch this delightful jewelbox of a movie, and helped this fic more or less write itself. Happy holidays!


End file.
